“She died before I left,” she assured him. Before it burned.
“Who was it that killed your brother?”
“I hoped that you would know,” she said. “I was in the cellar when it happened. I heard the gunshot, and I ran. I don’t even know why I ran. It’s like I couldn’t stop myself. I left Abe there. I left him like some coward.”
Her voice hitched, and the memory of Abe—his laughing eyes and his strong features that were so much like their father’s—threatened to overwhelm her. Threatened to pull her down so she’d never get back up.
“You are far from a coward, Cela Johnson.” Jianyu reached over and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. It was a strangely intimate gesture, a liberty that he didn’t have any right to take with her. But she didn’t stop him. She simply accepted his comfort as the gift she knew he’d intended.
“It’s because of Darrigan, isn’t it? Everything that happened to me—to Abe—it’s all because I took his mother in and accepted that damn ring as payment.”
“I cannot be sure, but . . .” He inclined his head, wincing a little at the movement.
“It’s why Evelyn locked me in my workshop. She wanted the ring Darrigan left me,” she told him. Cela still didn’t understand how the stupid wench had managed to get it out of the seam of her skirt, or why she had given it up without so much as a fight.
“Do you still have it?” Jianyu asked, his eyes cutting to her and his voice suddenly urgent. “Did Evelyn get the ring?”
“She must’ve taken it,” Cela said.
“No—”
“Good riddance to it, too. Evil old thing didn’t bring me anything but bad luck.”
Jianyu was looking paler than he had before. His skin had golden undertones before, but now the color all but drained from his face. “It’ll bring worse luck if we do not retrieve it.”
“We. There isn’t gonna be any ‘we,’ ” she told him. The streetcar was pulling to the curb and she wasn’t going to continue on this ride. “This is my stop. I’m going to go to my family, heaven help them, and you can go wherever you’d like, but I don’t want anything to do with that ring, or Harte Darrigan, or anything else. Now, I freed you, and you freed me, so I think we’d better call things even and part ways right here and now.”
Jianyu frowned, but he didn’t argue.
“I can’t exactly say it was a pleasure, but it was interesting.” She held out her hand. “God go with you, because lord knows that if you go after that ring, you’re gonna need every bit of his protection.”
He reached for her hand, but Jianyu’s skin barely touched hers before she registered how cool it felt—too cool—and then he was collapsing as though the life had gone right out of him. It was only her quick reflexes that kept him from hitting his head a second time.
She hadn’t realized he was in such bad shape. He’d seemed fine a moment before. Well, he wasn’t her responsibility. Cela propped Jianyu back up onto the seat and then started to go. But she got only about four steps away before she turned back.
She couldn’t leave him there. She should, but she couldn’t.
With a sigh, she jostled Jianyu until he was conscious again, just enough to get himself up. Even then she had to support his weight—his arm draped over her shoulder—to get him down the aisle and off the streetcar, apologizing to the folks who were watching her with clear disapproval as she went. Once outside, Cela took a moment to get her bearings. Jianyu was barely conscious, but he was at least on his feet.
“Come on,” she told him, heading deeper into the neighborhood. “Let’s get you somewhere before you go and pass out again.”
She hadn’t been relishing the idea of going to her family to start with. If her uncle Desmond and his brood looked disapprovingly at her before, she could only imagine what he would do when she showed up on his doorstep, homeless, grieving, and with a half-dead Chinese man in tow.
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
1904—St. Louis
It was madness inside the Jefferson Hotel. Jack stopped short not three steps into the lobby. Dark-suited police were everywhere. Some were talking to groups of people clad in evening finery—women in satin dripping with jewels and men in sharply cut tuxedoes that would have made even a Vanderbilt green with envy—while others had created a border around the room and watched any new arrivals with suspicious eyes.
“You can’t come in here now,” one of the officers barked at Jack, but the man’s voice was enough to bring him back to attention. And the morphine he’d just ingested was enough to make him not care. He stepped past the man without bothering to argue.
The man took him by the arm and whipped him around. “I said you can’t—”
“I was told to come,” Jack said, cutting him off.
“By who?” the officer blustered, narrowing his eyes.
“By me,” a voice said from behind the officer.
“Chief Matson, I presume?” Jack said, jerking free of the other officer’s grasp. He held out his hand in greeting.
The chief was a short man, stout and sturdy with the eyes of a hawk. “It’s good to finally meet you, Mr. Grew,” the man said as he shook Jack’s hand. “But I’m afraid it’s been a waste of your time.”
The man’s words cooled some of the easy warmth the morphine had spread through Jack’s veins. “You said they were here,” Jack said, his voice clipped.
“They were, but they’re gone now,” the police chief said.
“Gone.” The impossibility of the word was a punch in the stomach. “They can’t be gone. Didn’t you have men at all the exits?”
“Every one, regular and service alike. They didn’t get out any of the exits.”
“Then they have to be here,” Jack said, trying to keep his tone level. “Have you searched the whole hotel?”
“We don’t need to,” Matson told him.
Jack could practically feel the vein in his neck throbbing. Even with the morphine to dampen the noise and confusion of the lobby, the chief’s words sparked his temper. “Why the hell not?”
“What’s the point? We saw them disappear,” the chief said. “Hell, half the force saw it. Just about five minutes ago.” The chief pointed to a spot not twenty yards from the front door. “We had them surrounded, all their escapes blocked. They were there one minute and then—boom—they were gone, just like that. Like they were ghosts.”
I was right. They laughed behind my back and called me a fool, but I was right.
“ ’Course, I don’t believe in ghosts,” the chief of police said. “So I called the Guard.”
“The Guard?” Jack felt like the world had narrowed until he could concentrate on only one thing.
“The Jefferson Guard. They take care of any problems we have round these parts with illegal magic.”
“They didn’t take care of this one,” Jack said darkly. “This is unacceptable, Chief Matson. You assured me that you could secure the area for Roosevelt’s arrival.”